Curriculum

This course addresses human performance at the individual level with an emphasis on understanding how adults learn and change as well as the dimensions that foster learning and optimal employee performance in organizations. Accelerating Learning and Performance will build your proficiency as a coach or practitioner in using developmental leadership tools to diagnose performance gaps/enhancement opportunities and increase employee as well as one’s own personal effectiveness in the workplace. Students engage in an experiential team project that applies the course content to a current learning culture challenge in an organization of the student team’s choice. Expected course outcomes are to understand what learning means as an individual, how to diagnose and solution for learning challenges individuals face in the workplace, how to help organizations focus on learning as a competitive advantage, and personal and professional self-growth.

• Robert Corbett
• Eric Fridman
• Ryan Smerek

Applying People Analytics focuses on solving organizational challenges by applying data to make evidence-based recommendations and guide decisions. This course highlights issues-based consulting as a framework to ground learning about data in the work of LOC practitioners. Culture, engagement, and social network analysis (SNA) surveys are featured as examples of organizational data. The class provides introductions to these methods along with opportunities to explore data samples, generate evidence-based insights, and make practical recommendations. A multi-component case project guides student development of consulting skills and techniques for interpreting and presenting results to senior leadership. The course also explores what types of questions can be effectively answered using data and the ethical considerations of using data to solve organizational problems. By the end of this course, students will be adept at identifying and measuring LOC business issues, telling stories with data to persuasively and effectively to inform organizational decisions, and utilizing concepts and theories on culture, engagement, and SNA for organizational recommendations.

• Katerina Bohle Carbonell
• Ryan Smerek

In this course, students are introduced to advanced methods and tools used in collaborative coaching and consulting engagements. Students will learn and practice the fundamental competencies related to engaging clients, including how to build rapport, leverage active listening, how to establish a trusting environment, and collaboratively solve problems with the client as well as how to maintain long-term business relationships. The course will also take an in-depth look at communication skills and how to adapt appropriately at the necessary steps in the client relationship. Expected outcomes of the course include understanding the buying and selling cycle as well as client engagement phases, ability to address key issues that arise in client work, a greater self-awareness of one’s communication style and how to use it effectively, confidence in promoting one’s expertise and the advancement of critical thinking and problem solving skills to be adept at responding “in the moment” to client demands.

• Michelle Albaugh
• Cecelia Burokas

Designing Sustainable Strategic Change focuses on utilizing components of design thinking to develop organizational changes that are sustained over time in rapidly changing complex environments. Topics covered include an overall model of sustainable change, how the design process and design thinking integrate with organizational change principles and methodologies, using qualitative research to design change problems and build a case for change, participatory methods for strategic planning and large-scale systems change, and power/politics and coalition-building in the change process. Expected course outcomes are to understand how to increase an organizations capability for adaptability and innovation through non-traditional change management processes and data gathering, recognize the dynamics of culture in discovery, design, and success of sustainable organizational change and optimizing design tools and methods in the service of planning intended long-lasting change at multiple levels of the system.

• Dorie Blesoff
• Maggie Lewis

This course serves as an introduction to strategic change and will provide students with fundamental change models, concepts, and tools for facilitating strategic change in various organizational contexts. Students will examine how to identify organizational change needs, select appropriate models and steps to utilize, build a change strategy, and measure change impact all through the lens of a change agent and leader. In addition, the challenges associated with change implementation and adoption are examined. Various business case studies are explored in which individual students and student teams will conduct critical change analysis and strategy recommendations. Expected course outcomes include the practical application of strategic change models to business challenges, adoption of a proactive stance to barriers to strategic change, and the ability to understand the challenges and complexities of incorporating significant change at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

• Ahmmad Brown
• Vanessa Seiden